Ja­pan plans to de­velop mis­sile to counter China

JA­PAN will de­velop a new land-to-sea mis­sile as part of plans to beef up its de­fence of re­mote south­ern is­lands, as ten­sions with China in­crease over the dis­puted ter­ri­tory, a re­port said yes­ter­day.

The two coun­tries are locked in a long-run­ning dis­pute over the un­in­hab­ited islets known as the Senkaku in Ja­pan and the Diaoyu in China.

The re­port comes af­ter re­peated protests by Ja­panese for­eign min­istry of­fi­cials over what Tokyo calls “in­tru­sions” by Chi­nese ships in the ter­ri­to­rial and con­tigu­ous wa­ters of the rocky is­lands.

Tokyo plans to de­ploy the weapon, which re­port­edly will have a range of 300 kilo­me­tres (186 miles), on is­lands such as Miyako in Ok­i­nawa pre­fec­ture, the top-selling Yomi­uri Shim­bun news­pa­per said.

The range will cover the dis­puted is­land chain, the pa­per said, adding that the de­ploy­ment is ex­pected by 2023.